I just exchanged a few messages with a friend and said good-bye with "Stay negative!". Her response: "Unusual advice for unusual times." Indeed... 

In the last couple of months I have been affected by some events which made me feel like the ground beneath me became a little unsteady, a sensation of getting back to the shore after a choppy boat trip. Come to think of it, just the uncertainty caused by the mutating Covid virus and its consequences, are enough to unsettle anyone, especially in this time of year, when so many of us rely on traditions and rituals which help ground us. Any changes in life, whether unexpected or self-inflicted, are hard. I've been thinking about how to navigate changes and difficult times via anchors.

Anchors is a metaphor I'm using for anything steady and within your control. Many people turn to exercise. A regular exercise routine really helps to bring in some order and create your own space amidst work and other responsibilities. Exercise is also great for endorphins, and it creates headspace for frazzled minds. I talked to a friend who has been struggling with demands of home-schooling but found that regular yoga and personal training sessions have helped her breathe again. 

Exercise isn't, however, available to everyone. I used to turn to exercise for years until I fell ill with ME/CFS and had to find other ways to control my well-being. I can now exercise again but it's by no means constant. One of my anchors is cold-swimming, something I've started doing about four years ago. When you submerge yourself in cold water of, say 5C, and start swimming, there is literally no space to feel anger, anxiety or stress, because you have to concentrate on your strokes. Your senses are heightened by the burning cold and you think to yourself: "This is me being a real badass, and no one can take it away from me." Once out of the water, your body is glowing, and your mind is so clear, you feel you can take on the world. Another benefit of cold swimming is that you realise that your mind is incredibly powerful: of course you feel the cold physically, but regular swimming trains your brain to bypass that sensation. What you feel is your own personal power. (By the way, about an hour after swimming, because of ME/CFS, I tend to get very tired and my mind turns into 'cotton wool'. I then need to rest to feel better again. If you choose to give cold-swimming a go, do so responsibly.)

My ultimate anchor is meditation. I have been meditating daily for seven years and less regularly for even longer. Health benefits of meditation are widely publicised. For me, it simply revives me, but there are many other positive effects too. Even ten minutes of meditation (by yourself or via an app such as Headspace or Calm) help to 'close down all those windows' open in your mind, like tabs on your phone or computer. Focusing on your breath, for example, means keeping just one such window open. You feel calmer, clearer and energised in a much more levelled way than what you might get from a hit of caffeine or sugar.  

Last year I read Artist's Way by Julia Cameron where I learned about journaling. The author insists that you start your day with scribbling down three pages of whatever comes to mind, even if it's just "I don't have anything to say". It's not writing a diary, it's not even writing, it's an exercise which allows you to wring your mind first thing so that you can clear your head of potentially unhelpful thoughts and have a productive day. I kept it up for a few months and then abandoned, but every now and then I open my journal and 'vomit' down my thoughts. Some people absolutely swear by this exercise as it helps them plan their priorities, jot down creative ideas and write letters which are not meant to be sent. Others would say that their mornings are busy as they are... If you are looking for a way to establish a grounding routine, you might consider journaling.

What about relationships? Relationships are the sinews that connect our lives. But romantic relationships, friendships and family are fragile and may break up and fall, like branches off a tree. Having a support network is vital in turbulent times, but relationships are fluid. People disappear or move on. Having an anchor means retaining something within your control.

I'd very interested to hear any other ideas which work for you. Stay grounded and Happy New Year!

On 21 May 2021, when hotels and campsites were finally allowed to open after a long lockdown, I got on a train from Paddington to Newquay. I left London for the first time in five months - I was up for some adventure. I headed back to Cornwall to pick up the South West Coast Path where I'd left it off the previous year. Britain's longest national trail measuring 1,15km (630 miles) starts in Minehead in Somerset and traces the coast down to Devon, around Cornwall and all the way to Poole in Dorset. The guidebook I'm using divides the Path into 45 full-on walking days. Having done two 7-day walks in 2020, I was eager to keep going.

I arrived in the drizzling rain. My hotel in Newquay hasn't been aired for months. Decent local restaurants were fully booked, but surfing enthusiasts bobbing on the waves reminded me that there is no such thing as bad weather as long as you have the right attitude. The following morning was still uncertain whether to rain or to shine but I set off to Perranpoth, an 18km (11 1/4 mile) day with 580m ascent. At Towan Head I heard the roar of the ocean and inhaled that magical smell I have missed so much in the urban environment. I thought "I'm so happy I came here", and just then the sun appeared from behind the cloud. That first day turned out spectacular. I can only recommend that stretch of the Path: the Fistral beach, crossing the Gannel, Crantock Beach, the beautiful Holywell Bay and the never-ending Perran Sands, which reminded me on remote beaches in New Zealand.   

I stayed the night at a campsite about 20 minutes walk from Perranporth. I felt so happy. The following day everything changed. I woke up to a very chilly morning. I could barely bend my fingers to pack up the tent. Luckily, a breakfast van set up on the campsite was open for business, and I had a mean bacon batty to warm up a little. I headed down the hill to Perranporth but a minute later it began to rain. Then the wind picked up all of a sudden. The rain felt like icy pellets. Within minutes I was drenched. Not carrying waterproof trousers to save space is one thing, but hiking with a jacket which isn't exactly waterproof is just dumb. I got to Perranporth and took stock. There were no available places to stay in Perranporth or St Agnes along the coast. There was an availability at an inn in Portreath, which was 19.5km (12 miles away). I looked outside: the rain turned to drizzle. I could work with that. The £110 room came with a promise of a bath. 

The hike to St Agnes wasn't too dramatic. Once there I ordered tea but when two huge beer garden umbrellas took off simultaneously, I knocked off a paper cup trying to help lift them back up. At that time none of the Cornish establishments let you come inside because they could not provide the required anti-Covid arrangements. The only chance you had to get some respite from the elements was to sit on a loo for a minute or so.  

The next stretch to Portreath via Porthtowan was character-building. The rain wasn't crazy but I had to navigate a cliff path battling a gale, so the progress was slow. There was just one place which offered hot drinks and some shelter. It wasn't much. That day I wrote a story in my head to keep my mind occupied on anything other than my soggy circumstances. Later it took me two months to type it up and eight versions (so far) to edit it into shape. I hope to get it published one day, but I'm already most grateful that its heroine helped carry me to safety. My boots were completely soaked, an unfortunate manufacturing error, I was told, and, indeed, the replacement pair seems to be fine although it's yet to be tested properly. The lady at the inn took a remarkably long time to read me their Covid rules, but eventually I was in that bath. There were a couple of luxury biscuits on a tea tray. It even felt like a holiday.     

The next day was windy. And long. I walked from Portreath to St Ives, a 29km (18 miles) stretch with 810m ascent.  That's 43,800 steps, according to my watch, along the cliffs, around headlands and over the dunes. That day I was lucky to find a cafe where I could actually sit down for lunch. And then the sun came out and everything felt better. By the time I got to Carbis Bay, I forgot all about the day before. I stayed overnight in a pokey but comfortable B&B in St Ives and even went for swim before bedtime.

I woke up to the most gorgeous morning. I even found a place selling proper coffee and pastries which was already opened. The human psyche is incredible in that it doesn't take much to forget the pain and misery and see the sunny side of everything. The forecast, however, was not encouraging. I booked an inn in Pendeen because camping during a storm wouldn't be much fun. The guidebook said that the 21.5km (13 1/4 mile) remote stretch to Pendeed Watch was "one of the more difficult stages" of the Path "with often narrow and sometimes vague paths and numerous steep ascents and descents." "No refreshments on the route", it warned, "if you suffer poor weather, it becomes arduous treadmill." 

The rain clouds opened their hearts mid-morning. The few people around walking their dogs sensibly turned back. The wind picked up, the rain became a shower and the visibility dropped. So did the temperature. By comparison to my previous ordeal, it was colder, wetter and windier. There was no shelter whatsoever, no company, no way out other than to cross a boggy field to find a road and try to hitch a car. Another hiker I met a couple of days later who wasn't carrying a tent did just that and returned to St Ives. I'm not proud of myself for pressing on; there is a fine line between admirable perseverance and blind doggedness - I may have crossed it that day. Following the path seemed like the easier choice. It meant putting one foot in front of another and hoping that in time I make it. Isn't it what we do when we find ourselves in dire straits or the sea of grief?   

It took me many months to sit down to describe this adventure I so craved. I've been thinking about it a lot. It was hard, really hard, I cried only to tell myself to stop because the visibility was poor as it was. I tried to think of positive lessons I could learn from that endeavour ("Must buy a proper waterproof jacket - no sh*t, Jana!") or the tales I'd tell. I got angry. There was a sign advising hikers to give space to cattle but no button to press in emergency. Even at the time I thought about the incredible human resilience. All my senses were at high alert. I wasn't worried I would slip or get tired. I felt disconnected from myself as one feels when having to deal with a crisis. You shut one part of your brain to put down the fire. You won't feel the burn until much later. When I finally got to Pendeen Watch, I had to walk on a paved road into town. This is where I was near breaking point. A car passed by but wouldn't stop for me. I was so close that I began to feel the cold, the wind and the rain. At the inn I asked for a shot of brandy. Their room too had a bath. I filled it with scalding hot water but I couldn't warm up for a long long time. 

The next morning I woke up to the blue sky. I walked to Porthgwarra Beach via the Land's End, the most westerly point of mainland England.  I found a spot to camp and even had a cheeky dip in the sea at sunset. The next few days took me to Porthcurno beach and Mousehole with a lovely campsite at a local football club and decent eateries, and then onwards to Penzance, Marazion and Porthleven. I met up with a friend at Marazion where we enjoyed a hot bank holiday weekend until my body couldn't take it anymore, and I fell ill from exhaustion. Of course, at the time I thought it was Covid and returned to London in panic but that's another story. The point is that days got sunnier and warmer, I took photos of wildflowers and even ate ice cream to cool myself down. This time I walked 153.5km (95 1/4 miles) in eight days from Newquay to Porthleven and experienced enough joy to make me eager to return to the Path. The tough two days stayed in the past.

It is reportedly Anton Chekhov who said that any idiot can face a crisis, it's the day-to-day living that wears you out. Life in the pandemic has not been easy. Some of us who were fortunate to enjoy safety and security still struggled. Life without enjoyment, without challenges just hard enough to keep you eager, without regular social contact and without a little spice is hard. Any disabled or chronically ill person could tell you that but most people haven't experienced such dreariness until 2020. Thinking back to my adventure and the enforced monotony of Covid diaries, I wonder if we need to inject life with reasonable challenges every now and then or whether we should learn to embrace boredom as some philosophers suggest. 

And this is what I'm going to I leave you with, my dear reader. Will you put a kettle on or will you order a copy of The South West Coast Path by Paddy Dillon along with a proper waterproof and a tent?

I'm fascinated by the confluence of creative and commercial worlds. 

As a consumer, it's entirely possible to lap up what's on offer without giving it a second thought. Consider the so-called personal recommendations you get on Amazon or Netflix or even Ocado. As it happens, the novelty in the 'new' is preciously rare. What consumers get are the products of commercial decisions made by some pretty risk-averse individuals far removed from the creative process. We have to forgive them: it's their job. But if we want genuine inspiration from the arts and innovation from products and services, we need to act smart. This is how.

I used to buy a new book without thinking about what it took to get it picked up and published. It's only when I wrote my own memoir, Bird's Milk, that I learned about the inner works of the publishing industry. Every book (and every TV series and every play performed on stage) is a product of a formulaic set-up. True, it all begins with an idea and some often masochistic creative genius who works hard to bring that idea to life. Most creatives follow their own calling and write what's important to them. It's because it's pretty hard to keep going otherwise and tinker with something you care little about. Then a book or a script lands with an agent who must sell it to a publisher or a TV executive. It's at this stage that a script becomes "Fleabag meets Gossip Girl" or "Pride and Prejudice set in Pakistan". Publishing and show business are inherently risky industries where many fail and money is made from rare hits. The works that get picked up are usually those which can be compared best to previous success stories. No heads would roll if you commission something which looked like the next Game of Thrones.  

The same happens in non-creative industries where similarly risk-averse decision makers rule on which new products will be displayed on Tesco shelves, which start-ups will get funded and which projects will get backed. The fastest growing early stage businesses this year are on-demand grocery delivery startups because why fund a climate-crisis solution when you can pop more money into the pockets of Getir, Dija, Kavall, Gorillas or Weezy? This year alone investors ploughed hundreds of millions into these highly unoriginal ventures. The irony of this 'comparable' thinking is that Deliveroo is yet to make a profit while marketing identical services to consumers will erase even the possibility of breaking even. 

In the world where commercial decisions are so dependent on comparables and formulas it is a wonder that we get to consume anything genuinely original. Truly original art and products are nearly impossible to sell. This is precisely why creators from underrepresented backgrounds are finding it hard to break through: their stories are too different from what commissioning editors are used to and the problems their startups aim to tackle are too obscure for the average Etonian investor.

The fact that we now read and watch stories by Black writers is a testament to their perseverance and to the progress we as a society are making towards giving everyone an equal opportunity. Some of the recently published novels like Luster by Raven Leilani are groundbreaking. Earlier this summer I went to the Kiln theatre to see a play called Reasons You Should(n't) Love Me written and performed by Amy Trigg. It was about a twentysomething woman navigating work, love, friendships and spina bifida in a wheelchair. The show was remarkably humorous, tender and uplifting, and it made me look at the world from an entirely different point of view of a person who doesn't need my pity or help, but my understanding and empathy.  The play came to stage because Amy Trigg won the Women's Prize for Playwriting in 2020 and Paines Plough, a theatre company dedicated to new writing, helped to produce it. It wasn't Chekhov or Shakespeare - it was modern, relevant and incredibly inspiring. 

At the end of the day, it all comes down to us, consumers. It's up to us to signal what we like and want more of. You can either binge on the truly terrible revival of the Gossip Girl or head to the West End to see a play just because of its celebrity cast. Or you can challenge yourself to see something new and possibly uncomfortable and if you like it - make sure you tell everyone about it. 

The same goes to products and services we use every day. Try Oddbox for fruit and vegetables delivery, Rubies in the Rubble for ketchup and mayo, switch to sustainable energy providers, buy an electric or a hybrid car and, for goodness sake, don't get involved with fast grocery delivery apps - use your money to shape the world you want to live in. 

In late spring 2020, just as I was recovering from Covid-19, a friend, who knows me well, gave me a book, The Salt Path by Raynor Wynn. It was a strange but captivating memoir about a couple in their 50s who lost everything and decided to see if they can survive on benefits while walking the South West Coast Path. The South West Coast Path is the longest of Britain's National Trails, measuring a staggering 1,014km or 630 miles from Minehead in Somerset to Poole Harbour in Dorset. It has been officially opened sometime in the 1970s but of course the coastal trails have been used by inhabitants of the British Isles for centuries. As the broke couple navigates the strenuous Path first without suncream or decent sleeping bags, surviving on overpriced chips and pot noodles, they build up endurance, the husband's ill health improves, they gain confidence and discover deep contentment despite hardship. The book isn't well written or seductive in its description of the coast, but I got completely hooked on the idea of hiking the Path myself.

I bought the same guidebook by Paddy Dillon, and as soon as the lockdown restrictions were lifted in Britain in July 2020, I bought a train ticket to Minehead. I was still weak having suffered from post Covid fatigue, I was weary about leaving home for the first time in months, there was no certainty about camp sites being opened, and I was nervous about wild camping in England where it is illegal. Yet a powerful sense of wanderlust spurred me on, so I packed my light tent, a sleeping bag and a mat, and I was off.

The current record of walking the entire 1,014km (630 miles) path stands at 10 days 15 hours and 18 minutes, according to Paddy Dillon's guidebook. The author himself breaks the Path into more sensible 45 day sections but having covered 14 days so far, I can tell you honestly that the hiking is strenuous. In terms of distance, the days range from 16km (10 miles) to 37.5km (23 1/4 miles) and take 5h - 9h of walking. The difficulty are the cliffs you have to climb and descend many times a day. The guidebook indicates 1,000m (3,280 ft) ascents, and even though the entire trail is at sea level without the additional challenge of altitude, if you are carrying a tent and everything else, every step counts. 

There are many companies and resources online which help to plan the hike to your liking. It is possible to break the walk into shorter stages and book hotels and B&Bs to stay at. Even though many people were still reluctant to travel last year, B&Bs were full or charging at least £90 a room a night, including full English (but trust me, you don't want that every morning!). There are campsites on the coast but many tend to be off the Path adding hours to your already exhausting days. Many campsites were closed for hikers allowing camper vans or cars only. Some campsites were terrible (noisy, cold showers) but some were splendid indeed. After initial nervousness, I did camp in the wild several times. I never left any traces and left early in the morning. It is however illegal, so it's possible that some busybody might ask you to pack up and leave. Still, in the absence of open campsites or other available accommodation, I dared and had the most wonderful experience. 

I didn't carry any cooking equipment and tried to have a nice and warm pub meal every evening while also trying to charge my phone. Phone charge is in fact the biggest hassle. The Path is supposed to be well sign-posted but it's not always the case. Google Maps show the path very well, and the phone was also my camera, my social media diary tool and a way to book campsites and hotels on the go. You also need to look up ferry schedules and tides on occasion. I sometimes used to WhatsApp my mum and ask her to "push me a little" when the going got tough. I found rechargeable batteries unreliable, but it is essential to carry one.

I covered 158.5 official kilometres (98 1/2 miles) in July 2020 walking from Mainhead to Clovelly in seven days. Unofficially,  my step count was off the charts. In August 2020, I walked from Clovelly to Newquay - that's 149km (92 3/4 miles). In total, I clocked 307.5km (191 1/4 miles) - about one third of the entire Path.

Now that I've given you the facts, let me tell you the rest. Hiking the South West Coast Path was the most remarkable experience of my 2020. It certainly knocked the Covid-19 and the lockdowns off the pedestal. I have been meaning to write about it for a while but I have feared - rightly so - that it's impossible to put all the sensations neatly into words. Still, I must try.

The South West Coast of England is stunningly beautiful. You set off in Mainhead which isn't particularly pretty but the scenery gets from picturesque to jaw-droppingly stunning in a matter of hours. Devon is gorgeous, and then you enter Cornwall and you think you've arrived. On a sunny day it is impossible to come up with a more idyllic setting. There are cliffs and the sea, wildflowers and blueberries. There are so many shades of blue and green that you begin to curse the inadequacy of your own vocabulary even when you are simply trying to add a quick comment to an obviously gorgeous photo on Instagram. After being locked at home, just one breath of fresh sea air is enough to lift your spirits all the way to heaven.

The English weather didn't disappoint - I saw it all. It rained in Mainhead on the very first day; I camped in the rain; I experienced seriously strong winds, which are not at all unusual. Still, after a few grey days you appreciate the blues skies and the warmth of sunshine with such intense gratitude that it's possible to convert any old atheist to embrace God.

London has never been a friendly place, you certainly don't expect someone to strike up a conversation on the tube now wearing a mask. Yet as soon as I started walking, I found myself stopping for a chat. I mostly talked to locals walking their dogs or people coming to the coast for a holiday and enjoying day walks; very occasionally I met other long distance hikers. The rucksack on my back and a big smile often prompted people to say hello and ask me about my hike. Very often I heard people say how they always wanted to do the whole Path but somehow they never got round to it...

I found people incredibly friendly but only to the extent their Britishness would permit. A couple of years ago I was hiking in Kyrgyzstan where it was rude to pass by a yurt without coming in for a cup of tea or a bite to eat. To make progress, I learnt not to walk too close to the huts unless I needed a break. By contrast, in Devon I was chatting to a lady by her doorstep. She asked: "Would you like a drink?" I couldn't believe my ears - no one has invited me in previously but before I could reply, she said: "We have a very nice pub in the village. It might be full but you should give it a go." On another occasion, on a rainy and windy afternoon I arrived at a large campsite only to be told that no walk-ins were allowed. "Anyway, I hope you'll find somewhere to stay", the manager said, not unkindly. It was my first wild camping experience in a sheep grazing field behind the car park. (I didn't see any cattle at night but the curious animals woke me up at the crack of dawn).

Much like Moth from The Salt Path, I felt like I was rejuvenated walking along the sea coast. Any lasting effects of Covid seems to have disappeared in the salty air. The days were long and tiring, at nights I slept like a log and woke up stiff but within an hour I would be putting one foot in front of another again. I had little time for sightseeing or even rest during the day not because I wanted to set some sort of record or hit a target but simply because every night I wanted to get a proper meal so I had to reach some kind of village or town. Some people I met did carry small gas stoves and simple food to cook but I didn't want to carry any more weight or give up the comfort of a pub dinner. And so the endurance of the hike was certainly the main theme of my experience.

A goal of reaching point X by sunset was beautifully straightforward - unlike making myself heard on Zoom or ensuring a meaningful contribution in my role at work. Everything was so simple: I didn't have to second guess the ferry timetable or the unfortunately closed pub where I was hoping to rest at lunchtime. I had to walk a little faster, take it on the chin, deal with it. I think the simplicity of challenges set to us by nature is a blessing. The weather isn't rainy for some ulterior purpose, and the ascent isn't steep for some personal vendetta. Being in nature is a wonderful lesson of how not to overthink or take things personally.

Walking can be a meditative experience but actually it's quite difficult to clear your head completely. Instead, walking along the sea creates space between you and your thoughts. It's as if you want to keep obsessing about a problem but the great cold beast beside you reminds you that whatever dwells in your head is tiny relative to the ocean. Walking through the forest is similarly soothing, not because it's quiet but because you can hear hundreds of birds chirping at the same time. Not every one of them is a maestro but it doesn't discourage them from singing along.  

It would come as no surprise that I cannot wait to set off again. Soon I'll be heading to Newquay and will be turning the corner around Land's End to get to the South section of the Path. I'll end up somewhere in Mount's Bay a week later - probably exhausted, a little windswept but definitely happy - and with plenty of miles still to tackle.  

Last night we had a social Zoom with my UK colleagues. The idea was to catch up exactly a year after we've started working from home. As a company, we have weekly team meetings but we've only had a few more intimate catch-ups over the last 12 months.

I thought it would be fun to get things going with a game of Two Truths and a Lie. We tried to come up with lockdown stories to fool each other. It turns out that people are gullible, especially in the hands of seasoned pranksters. Still, I found it incredible that we had no idea whether our close colleagues were telling the truth about running a half marathon, nearly poisoning the entire family with a cake decorated with inedible flowers or abstaining from alcohol in the last 6 months. I claimed to have visited seven countries other than the UK last year - no one (including me) could believe it. And yet it's true.  

It really brought home what we know to be true: offices are not just desks, ergonomic chairs and meeting rooms. It's where spontaneous exchanges of information take place all the time. There are industry news, updates from meeting clients, a little gossip and endless opportunities to test ideas, gauge opinions and get feedback you simply cannot receive via Zoom. 

Last night I became so despaired at my ability to separate wheat from the chuff that I wondered what it must be like when one's job is to make investment, hiring or commercial decisions using Zoom. Granted, a face-to-face meeting is not enough to do proper due diligence but personal interaction is vital to complete the picture you have otherwise got from numbers and words. And how would you ever know if a person who works for you is feeling down or overwhelmed if you rely on occasional Zoom? A member of your team might be giving you the standard "I'm good, thanks" and look the part on the screen. In the office, you and your colleagues would surely be able to pick on telling signs of someone's depression or anxiety but you'd never know in lockdown. 

The absence of serendipitous moments by the proverbial water cooler, challenges on how to communicate and the detrimental effect on our mental wellbeing are difficult to measure but intuitively we know that our productivity must have suffered over the last 12 months. We can only hope that things will simply get better once the lockdown ends. In the meantime, I'll savour my feat of fooling nearly everyone with a story of a wolf pup my neighbours had kept as a pet during my childhood in Russia... 

Last year I read an illuminating book Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsh in which she shared her view on observing Black History Month each October. At school and in the media we profile Black heroes once a year and discuss their lives and experiences. How about we incorporated Black history into British or American history and changed the narrative from the celebration of the British imperial achievements to a more balanced account, including experiences of the natives of former colonies? Perhaps we would learn how that less than straightforward history shaped our society. Instead of condemning advocates of why statues must fall, we might wonder whose names adorn our art institutions, such as Tate.

Tate museums, in case you didn't know, are named after the philanthropist Henry Tate, who made his money via Tate & Lyle, a British sugar refining business, which relied on slave labour (and continued exploitation of Afro-Caribbeans after the slavery had been abolished). I am grateful to Sir Henry for his generosity, but equally I feel it's good to know where the money came from. 

And now, in case I haven't learned the lesson from Black History Month, I get to have first hand experience. March 2021 is now Women's History Month, says the US government. Come to think of it, it's a bit of an upgrade since according to this website, the origins of this "celebration" date back to 1981 when Congress authorised women's history to be celebrated for the whole week before progressing it to a month. We should be joyful!

As a result, I got a handful of emails last week about panels celebrating women's achievements and caught glimpse of media headlines putting spotlight on heroines in all walks of life. Without realising it, I even joined he movement by celebrating 8 March, International Women's Day, with a series of Instagram posts about women who had especially inspired me in the last 12 months. 

But you know what? It was a little hard going with everything that has been on top of the media agenda otherwise. The women making headlines were Nicola Sturgeon, Meghan Markle and now Sarah Everard - all the for the wrong reasons. Commemorating women's history one month a year and patting yourself on the back will not improve visibility of women's achievements or the inequality in our society. Women - half of the world's population - cannot be forgotten for most of the year. Their agenda must be everyone's agenda, otherwise, as Caroline Criado-Perez has described so well in her book, Invisible Women, we'll keep getting smartphones too big for an average woman's hand, drugs which have not been properly tested on women and cars which have not been crash-tested with female body dummies. 

I'm sure Women's History Month and all the associated initiatives have been well intentioned. We'll just have to hope that a dose of empowerment will carry us through the rest of the year.

I'll finish on a lighter note:

- How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?- None. It’s not the lightbulb that needs changing.

I've just finished reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by a Booker Prize-winning author, George Saunders, in which he analyses seven Russian XIX century short stories and delivers a master class on writing, reading and life. It's an ingenious workbook for writers and geeky readers who obsess about structure, flow, language and meaning. George Saunders, who teachers creative writing at Syracuse University in New York, accomplished a luminous and hilarious read, which also helped me reconnect with the literature's best short story tellers - Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Gogol. 

The stories Saunders picked for his book stayed with me. I tried to describe them to a friend but none of the adjectives I sampled ("great", "epic", "thought-provoking") would do - until I got it. These stories made me feel uncomfortable. See for yourself.

In Tolstoy's "Master and Man", an arrogant egotist never reforms. No character transformation from the moral-ethical giant!

In Chekhov's "In the Cart", a woman is forced to live a hard, boring life of a provincial teacher no one appreciates. There is no hope for her to get out, no Prince Charming comes to the rescue either.

In Turgenev's "The Singers", peasants are deeply touched by the holy beauty of music - only to get utterly wasted later, the only thing they know.

In Gogol's "The Nose", a sycophant who loses his nose gets it back and continues to live a shallow life, chasing skirts. 

In Chekhov's "The Darling", a woman only becomes alive when attached to a man. She has no opinion of her own, no purpose. She never learns. 

"Alyosha the Pot" follows orders, never causes trouble, gets pushed around a lot. What does Tolstoy do? He kills him. End of. Life is unfair. 

In those short stories (all Russian short stories?) there are no happy endings, no escapism - Bridgerton it is not. You root for Alyosha the Pot to stand up to his father, but he meekly resigns to his fate, like any poor uneducated young man in the turn of the century Russia. You hope that "The Darling" starts to love herself but her clingingness never subsidies. You want Chekhov to give his schoolteacher "In the Cart" some hope at the end of the day, but she just cries "Mama!" and bursts into tears. It's just like in life - we don't get our big breaks and instead are repeatedly crushed down with a myriad of tiny disappointments until we harden with resilience. 

​The truth of these stories made me feel uncomfortable. But it gave me some consolation too. We live in seriously testing times which have exposed human flaws like never before. News stories about the UK government officials giving away huge contracts to their mates make us feel indignant, but what of the well-publicised reluctance of some people to get vaccinated against Covid-19? These jabs, a triumph of science and technology, are our way out to save lives, open economies, help people get back to work and improve mental health of billions of people after months of lockdowns. Yet the reluctance is understandable too: some are worried about long-term side effects of vaccines, others do not trust their governments. People who refuse to get jabs are selfish. Consciously or not, they rely on the herd immunity, same as people who throw litter rely on someone else to clean the streets after them. What to think?

I found that uncomfortable stories helped me attune my own compass to today's moral dilemmas. I will not forget PPE contracts awarded to Tories' mates at the next General Election, nor will I hire a Moscow-based photographer whose otherwise busy Instagram account stayed silent during anti-corruption protests in Russia. I'm proud of the UK government's success with the vaccination roll-out, and I understand that posting #FreeNavalny may cause one lose certain clients, but unlike women or peasants in the XIX century Russia, most of us have the agency to make choices and I, for one, want to do the right thing. 

Come to think of it, the best stories have always been uncomfortable. You may watch Emily in Paris but you'll forget it in a week. It's a Sin, on the other hand, will haunt you. Writers like Lionel Shriver, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mohsin Hamid, Svetlana Alexievich take on difficult issues and odious human behaviour which get under the skin. Their books are sometimes - often even - not well received by the general public because they force us to consider our own flaws and skeletons in the closet. But you know your conscience is working extra hard when you feel frustrated having been denied a happy ending in a story you've invested in.

The reason uncomfortable stories stand out is because there aren't many of them around. As Kazuo Ishiguro pointed out in a recent interview, a "climate of fear" is preventing some people from writing what they want. "I very much fear for the younger generation of writers" who are self-censoring by avoiding writing from certain viewpoints or including characters outside their immediate experiences. He said they may be concerned that an "anonymous lynch mob will turn up online and make their lives a misery". God forbid a white creative comes up with a black protagonist or expresses a non-liberal mainstream view on consumption of meat, transgender, sweat shops or climate crisis. 

At the beginning of the year I felt a little dispirited as neither books nor TV series I consumed got through to me. But I now I feel reinvigorated. True, reading Tolstoy and Chekhov makes any - even Booker-Prize winning writers - feel like they'll never be good enough. But the lesson here for all of us is that if you have came across an uncomfortable story in a book or on screen, give yourself a break. Have a rest. And then seek another one. 

I recently listened to a radio programme More or Less on BBC Radio 4 where they talked about whether birds started singing more loudly. It surely felt this way in spring 2020 when during the lockdown in London birds were having a field day. It turned out that birds weren’t in fact signing more loudly: if anything, they didn’t have to strain themselves in the absence of traffic and other human noise pollution. Ordinarily, birds have to raise their volume to get heard but this spring we happened to make their job easier by giving them a platform to express themselves with gusto. 

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota and the rise of #BlackLivesMatter movement in the US, UK and globally, some may wonder why black people are shouting. The answer is simple. They are protesting and rioting because otherwise they cannot get themselves heard. They have tried and tried, but little has changed. They are shouting in desperation hoping that this time the rest of us will listen.

I sat down to write this not because I want to teach someone a lesson - there are plenty of preachers out there on social media summarising #BlackLivesMatter into neat Instagram images. I’m writing this, like pretty much every Life Tonic I’ve written to date, to process this matter myself. Writing helps me so after watching and reading and talking and listening, I sat down to put my tangled thoughts down. 

I’m pretty sure I haven’t figured it all out and that’s OK. There is plenty I don’t know. I wish our leaders admitted that more often. It’s OK to make mistakes. It’s not OK not to try to do something when our fellow citizens are risking their lives amidst the pandemic to campaign for change.

The first #BlackLivesMatter message I heard loud and clear is that we, white people, need to shut up and listen for a change. I did some DIY over the weekend, a rather thought-provoking activity, as it turns out, and found myself contemplating my white privilege. It sounds funny only if you haven’t thought about it properly. 

White privilege quite simply refers to the fact that white people don’t have to deal with negative assumptions made about them based solely on the colour of their skin, whereas black people experience it every day. Black people have to “prove themselves” in everyday situations because of the prejudicial assumptions made about them at work, on the street, etc. Someone put it well: white privilege doesn’t mean your life isn’t hard, it just means that the colour of your skin isn’t making it harder.  

I admit that I have not thought much about it before. Now that I have, it makes me look back and realise that black people have to make so much effort just to avoid some of prejudice they experience. I work closely with a black person who never swears and is exceedingly polite. In Small Island by Andrea Levy I read about black kids of the British Empire being taught manners by their mothers so that a white man could never find a reason to reproach them. Last week I cycled to Finsbury Park where a black man about to enter the gate ahead of me attempted to give me way. Why? I arrived after him. And I saw very clearly it was his habit to let people like me go through first. 

Another thing I learned about myself walking with a friend along the Regent’s Canal on Saturday is that the colour-blindness I pride myself in may be missing a point. I understand colour-blindness to be a virtue in that I see the person not the colour of his skin. Indeed, I never think of my people of colour friends any differently than I think of my white friends. And yet this means that I also choose not to see the colour of their skin and how it may affect their lives. I see a handsome, successful, interesting to talk to Goldman Sachs banker but not what it might feel like to be one of the very few people of colour at the top of that institution or what it took him to get there. I see a beautiful, fun-loving, exercise junkie I used to work with, but it never occurred to me that she was once explicitly told what kind of hairstyles were acceptable for a black woman to wear in our office. 

Having said that, I don’t know what to do with this new angle I now see. I tried calling a black friend and asking if she had a racism-free day and we both laughed. I don’t expect anyone to call me and say: “Any casual sexism you experienced today?” either. But perhaps we could all learn to open up a bit and talk about our experiences. 

Some say don’t make comparisons of your own experience to #BlackLivesMatter but I disagree. Comparisons is what helps us relate, understand and learn. Empathy isn’t something you can buy on Amazon, it’s a muscle which gets better with exercise. #BlackLivesMatter took over our lives in the same way #MeToo hashtag took over social media a couple of years ago. I will never forget that experience of seeing so many women posting their stories or just #MeToo on their Facebook walls. It was truly overwhelming and brought up some deeply buried memories. It was also life-reaffirming and gave me hope that going forward we won’t tolerate harassment, and the new generation of women especially would be brave to speak up.

I realised that watching a black man pinned down by a white policeman begging for mercy and the subsequent outcry from the black communities must have brought up all sorts of memories for people of colour. We are advised to check up on our friends and I tried. But that isn’t easy either. I struggle, for example, to find the right words for a grieving person, but formulating a text message about racial abuse is something else entirely. 

Yesterday the chief executive of my company invited all of us to write to him and suggest what we could do to make sure that Black Lives Matter. If there is thing you could do, what would it be?

I was sort prepared because I did spend some time thinking about it and bouncing some ideas off my friends. We talked about mentorship and even more importantly sponsorship of black talent, creating opportunities where rather than having a token black presence in governing institutions, companies and on screen, we should encourage and support people of colour to progress their ambitions. Plenty of such initiatives already exist, e.g. a friend of mine is involved in promoting greater diversity of undergraduates in Cambridge, venture capital fund Backstage Capital runs an accelerator programme to help underrepresented founders in the US and in London. 

But if I had to choose one thing with the widest reach and longest impact, it’s education. I’m not familiar with the school curriculum be it history, literature or arts here in the UK or in the US and I would leave it to specialists to educate us on that. What I have in mind are two practical ways we could try to reach everyone from preschool kids to pensioners promenading in Thanet.

First, we need to give black people a platform to speak while white people should just shut up and listen. 

Right now black people / people of colour talk in an echo chamber while we, white people, occasionally put black people on comedy panels, insert them into theatre plays, even elect them so we can pat ourselves on the back and move on. This is tokenism. 

Let’s give black people the platform. If you currently work in a company hosting regular Zoom meetings, invite non-white members of your staff to speak. Sure it requires some bravery but they don’t need to talk about racism. They could simply share their everyday experiences like the achievements of their kids or the last holiday they enjoyed and keep longing for during lockdown. Maybe the next person will talk about people who inspired them or how they felt when Obama was elected and how they feel now. Someone may even talk about how they taught their kids about racism and even invite white parents to share what they told their kids about prejudice. 

This is practical and I believe it could make a huge difference in a small way. 

Second, we need to create and market content which educates the public at large. 

There is plenty to cover.

For example, did you know that black women are five times more likely to die in pregnancy, birth or postpartum than white women in Britain? I listened to a Woman’s Hour podcast about it last summer and I still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing (hiking to Kilemche village in Kyrgyzstan). 

We need to inspire black kids to reach for the stars, teach them confidence, encourage all young adults to call out discrimination when they see it, prompt teachers to think harder about books and art works they choose for their pupils. 

I started following an amazing account on Instagram called @ablackhistoryofart. It’s run by a Cambridge student studying art who discovered there was no black art on the curriculum so she started posting works of black artists and putting interesting captions like what does a hoody symbolise or how does it make you feel. Next thing you know people will start buying paintings from black artists… or so I hope. 

Luckily, we now live in the world with an abundance of media platforms with films, TV series, podcasts, books, blogs, radio shows, plays, live events - all of these are capable to educate and inspire us to become better citizens. Why, even pub quizzes could include questions like “How many CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in the US are black?” or “What was the highest grossing movie made by a black director?”  or “Which sport is Simone Biles famous for?” or “Whose real name is Michael Omari or, if you like, Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr? (The answers are below.) 

I’m pretty confident that most people reading this are already doing something to educate themselves. Have you heard that Brit-ish, a book by Afua Hirsh has actually been sold out on Amazon? But let’s be honest, not everyone is like that so we need all types of content to reach every white policeman in Minnesota and every Wetherspoon’s patron here in the UK. We need broadcasters, publishers, movie studios to put some money behind content highlighting black lives, and we, as consumers, need to spend our money so that it becomes not just a nice thing to do but a profitable thing too. (Here is an independent publisher which creates shelf space for diverse writers.)

If this ended up being a long article, this is by no means all. I'm still thinking and processing it all and I hope I won’t ever stop. All thoughts and ideas welcome. 

Answers: 4; Black Panther; Gymnastics; Stormzy